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Ask Slashdot: Bring Your Own Last Mile(s) 1

Submitted by Jaqenn
Jaqenn writes "I'm considering buying a house a little past the fringe of my area's broadband infrastructure. The major providers for my area all claim not to service the address, and if I cannot pay them to build out to the location I'd like some advice on what my other options are.

Lets pretend that I have a confederate 1 — 5 miles away that is eligible for service, and will let me install any kind of crazy equipment needed to route traffic between his location to mine. What are my options (and prices) for bridging that gap? Is it feasible to run my own fiber optic cable? How about some kind of microwave bridge? Point-to-Point lasers? Pringles cantennas?"

Comment: Re:Fear economics (Score 1) 220

It's a tangent, but there's a good article on 2008 rice prices freaking out because of the same effect: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/11/02/141771712/how-fear-drove-world-rice-markets-insane

Short version is that in a normal environment there is enough rice produced for everyone, but suddenly everyone worries that RIGHT NOW they need to buy all the rice they will eat ALL YEAR, and that causes problems.

The solution was really interesting too. Turns out that Japan artificially insulates it's rice farmers from foreign competition, but to satisfy world trade agreements they buy lots of rice that sits in warehouses and rots. People started negotiations to re-export that rice to countries with a shortfall, and as soon as the word got around that this might happen people went back to normal buying behavior and the problem evaporated without actually moving anything around.

Comment: Re:Connecting to a tracker != downloading (Score 1) 340

by Jaqenn (#38346682) Attached to: Site Offers History of Torrent Downloads By IP
I'm curious why you think the judge would be an idiot to sign such a warrant?

I thought warrants were to keep police from going on fishing expeditions where they just show up at your house and look for something, anything, to bust you for. Demonstrating that someone at that address connected to a tracker, requested a block, and now they'd like legally seize the computer to see if the block arrived seems like the iconic use of a warrant.

Comment: Re:It's working (Score 3, Interesting) 448

by Jaqenn (#38345990) Attached to: The Mexican Cartel's Hi-Tech Drug Tunnels

...or they take the prison sentence and be given a comfortable retirement by the mob when they are released (as their reward for serving a sentence in silence)...

I can't offer a source (sorry), but I was listening to this podcast on criminal justice a few years ago, and they talked about it being semi-common in Japan for the Yakuza to assassinate their own members in prison. It wasn't because they were afraid the guy would rat them out, it was because he was just a low level employee that they didn't feel like they owed very much to, and it was cheaper to pay for him to be killed then to be obligated to pay his retirement when he got out.

I wonder if that ever happens stateside.

Comment: Re:So both and get it done! (Score 1) 954

by Jaqenn (#38139026) Attached to: Debt Reduction Super Committee Fails To Agree
Dude, he's not trying to insult you, he was just using an example. Here, let me offer one that would make you happier:

When your country has a GDP of $14.5 trillion a year, and you've got $15 trillion in debt, You need to raise taxes and you need to reduce spending on things you can limp by without, and pay off that national debt

Comment: Re:Bad Design Decisions All Around (Score 3, Interesting) 121

by Jaqenn (#38022986) Attached to: <em>LEGO Universe</em> To Shut Down
There's always Blockland:

http://blockland.us/Video.html

I've only played the demo, but I've loved them ever since reading their IGF entry (http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2009.php?id=420):

Blockland is a non-competitive multiplayer online sandbox game where players can build with interconnecting plastic bricks which are similar to, but legally distinct from, legos.

Comment: The Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field Killed Him (Score 5, Insightful) 988

by Jaqenn (#37790794) Attached to: Jobs Wanted To Destroy Android
I'm more astounded by this:

"I've asked [Jobs why he didn't get an operation then] and he said, "I didn't want my body to be opened...I didn't want to be violated in that way," Isaacson recalls. So he waited nine months, while his wife and others urged him to do it, before getting the operation, reveals Isaacson. Asked by Kroft how such an intelligent man could make such a seemingly stupid decision, Isaacson replies, "I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don't want something to exist, you can have magical thinking...we talked about this a lot," he tells Kroft. "He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it....I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner."

Which means that the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field ultimately claimed the life of it's creator.

Everything can be filed under "miscellaneous".